Have you given up on me as a lost cause, Stephen? I was still hoping that you would give some explanation as to your own use of the term "experiential perfect." I'm still not sure I understand its semantic space in your typology, particularly since you say that you place it between resultative and anterior...which is seems to be extremely counter-intuitive to me. I would have put "experiential" as more anterior-like than "current relevance." Can you flesh out the reasoning behind the organization? I really, really want to understand your conceptualization of the system, but thus far all you've given is theoretical without examples.

In other news...

I heard back from Dag Haug. He told me that his "target state" should be viewed as equivalent to Bybee's "resultative" and his "resultant state" as existing as a fuzzy boundary between Bybee's Resultative and Anterior. Or more accurately, I told him that is how I had taken his 2004 labels and asked if it was accurate and he said "definitely yes."

As to the relationship between his discussions of the experiential perfect in his 2004 article and the 2008 article, he said he'd need to think about it.

Mike AubreyCanada Institute of Linguistics & Trinity Western University Graduate School

Thanks for the update on Haug. Not sure the strategic fuzziness on his part is too helpful, because it's led us to read in our own theory and often our own terminology into Haug's article, making it almost impossible to discuss without confusion.

OK, as for the experiential perfect, I never thought it's a big deal. Comrie's definition comes pretty close to how I understand it, and I'm also with him that the non-permanence of the result state is an implication, not an entailment. (Of course, if the result state is permanent, I'm going to call it a resultative (or in certain cases a persisting/universal), because that is the more informative and usually more relevant reading for the discourse.) Nevertheless, now that you've pointed it out, I've noticed that some linguists view the non-permanence of the result state an entailment while others view it as an implication, so I suppose it's good to be alert about differences in terminology.

As for where the experiential functions fits in my scheme, I recognize that most classifications of the functions of the anterior perfect make the experiential a subset of that type. I don't really have a problem with it. But I do see the experiential as transitional between the resultant state function and the anterior's current relevance functions. Like the resulative, the experiential can be thought of as referring to a state (viz., the status of having done the action) but, unlike the resultative, this state is not the (change of) state denoted by the verb but something more abstract. Indeed, I see the experiential as the main gateway for the Greek perfect's slow expansion from the resultative function into the territory of the anterior. Once active transitives acquired the reading, it starts becoming available to other verbs without a clear result state for the subject, including experiencer subjects and other subjects of active verbs.

Here are some examples of experientials:

John 1:18 wrote:Θεὸν οὐδεὶς ἑώρακεν πώποτε ·No one has ever yet seen God.

John 1:32 wrote:Καὶ ἐμαρτύρησεν Ἰωάννης λέγων ὅτι τεθέαμαι τὸ πνεῦμα καταβαῖνον ὡς περιστεράν ἐξ οὐρανοῦ καὶ ἔμεινεν ἐπ’ αύτόν.And John testified, saying that “I have beheld the spirit coming down like a dove from heaven and it stayed on him.”

1 John 1:1 wrote:Ὃ ἦν ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς, ὃ ἀκηκόαμεν, ὃ ἑωράκαμεν τοῖς ὀφθαλμοῖς ἡμῶν, ὃ ἐθεασάμεθα καὶ αἱ χεῖρες ἡμῶν ἐψηλάφησαν περὶ τοῦ λόγου τῆς ζωῆς —What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes—what we beheld and our hand touched concerning the word of life —

In all these cases, any result state appears to be transient, but the status of having witnessed or being guilty lives on. By the way, I'm on board with McKay, S&S, Rijksbaron, etc. that the Greek perfect does not refer to the state of the object. It's my working hypothesis right now. We could discuss that later, I don't think they don't apply to these examples in any event.

Stephen Carlson wrote:Thanks for the update on Haug. Not sure the strategic fuzziness on his part is too helpful, because it's led us to read in our own theory and often our own terminology into Haug's article, making it almost impossible to discuss without confusion.

Yes, well, fundamentally, fuzziness invariably existed at some point. We're talking about language change, after all. If anything its more unhelpful to avoid fuzziness. And if we take a prototype theoretic perspective, then we should exect fuzziness even in the eras where the perfect is quite clearly within the realm of Resultative (e.g. Homer).

I think this is the best of them for being an experiential perfect--and I'm with you here. This clause is in my list of probable instances of semantic change.

The problem with the rest is that they're all perception verbs. And perception verbs have always been able to form these sorts of semantics in the perfect as far back as we have texts:

Homer, Iliad 24.392 wrote:τὸν μὲν ἐγὼ μάλα πολλὰ μάχῃ ἔνι κυδιανείρῃ ὀφθαλμοῖσιν ὄπωπαMany a time have I set eyes upon him in battle

Homer, Odyssey 3.93–94 wrote:εἴ που ὄπωπας ὀφθαλμοῖσι τεοῖσιν ἢ ἄλλου μῦθον ἄκουσαςwhether you have seen it with your own eyes, or heard it from some other traveler

I suppose that we could say that there were nascent experiential perfects in Homer, Hesiod, and the Hymns, but it seems counter intuitive in light of the history. Or are these perhaps different than the Koine instances in some way that I haven't noticed? Thoughts?

John 1:32 wrote:Καὶ ἐμαρτύρησεν Ἰωάννης λέγων ὅτι τεθέαμαι τὸ πνεῦμα καταβαῖνον ὡς περιστεράν ἐξ οὐρανοῦ καὶ ἔμεινεν ἐπ’ αύτόν.And John testified, saying that “I have beheld the spirit coming down like a dove from heaven and it stayed on him.”

1 John 1:1 wrote:Ὃ ἦν ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς, ὃ ἀκηκόαμεν, ὃ ἑωράκαμεν τοῖς ὀφθαλμοῖς ἡμῶν, ὃ ἐθεασάμεθα καὶ αἱ χεῖρες ἡμῶν ἐψηλάφησαν περὶ τοῦ λόγου τῆς ζωῆς —What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes—what we beheld and our hand touched concerning the word of life —

I would also say be careful with negation, which invariably involves a persistent state with the perfect, since the predication is the non-existence of a past event and nonexistence isn't an experience; it's a state.

Mike AubreyCanada Institute of Linguistics & Trinity Western University Graduate School

Sure. I wanted to give some pretty clear examples of experiential perfects. I've got other examples too, but they are less straightforward and may need more analysis.

Yes, with experiencer subjects, it's not a big deal to have experiential perfects. Without anterior semantics, I wonder how they would be handled. Quasi-resultatives? At any rate, Haug 2004 is helpful in pointing out that quasi-resultatives and extended now perfects (which is one theory of the anterior) have the same truth values, so they can be a bridging construction in the further grammaticalization of the perfect along the cline.

In the following example we have a verb of perception paired with a speech act verb, both experiential perfects in my mind to convey a sense of being a witness:

John 1:34 wrote:ἑώρακα καὶ μεμαρτύρηκα ὅτι οὗτός ἐστιν ἑκλεκτὸς τοῦ θεοῦ."I have seen and I have testified that he is the chosen one of God."

Even unpaired with a verb of perception, μαρτυρεῖν can have an experiential reading in the perfect:

John 5:37 wrote:καὶ ὁ πέμψας με πατὴρ ἐκεῖνος μεμαρτύρηκεν περὶ ἐμοῦ. οὔτε φωνὴν αὐτοῦ πώποτε ἀκηκόατε οὔτε εἶδος αὐτοῦ ἑωράκατε.“And the father who sent me, he has testified about me. You have never yet heard his voice or seen his form.”

Yes, negatives are special. Experiential readings would make the denial stronger:

John 8:33 wrote:ἀπεκρίθησαν πρὸς αὐτόν · σπέρμα Ἀβραάμ ἐσμεν καὶ οὐδενὶ δεδουλεύκαμεν πώποτε · πῶς σὺ λέγεις ὅτι ἐλεύθεροι γενήσεσθε;They replied to him, “We are Abraham’s seed and we have never been enslaved to anyone. How can you say that ‘you will become free’?”

Here's an example that could also be experiential, but I'm not sure the information structure supports it:

John 12:29 wrote:ὁ οὖν ὄχλος ὁ ἐστὼς καὶ ἀκούσας ἔλεγεν βροντὴν γενονέναι, ἄλλοι ἔλεγεν · ἄγγελος αὐτῷ λελάληκεν.So the crowd that stood and hear were saying that it had been thunder. Others were saying, “An angel has spoken to him.”

It is interesting that there are so many of these in the Johannine writings, whose language is more Koine than Classical. How about Paul, then?

There are some perfects where it's harder to distinguish between experiential and (other) anterior readings.

2 Cor 11:25 wrote: 23 διάκονοι Χριστοῦ εἰσιν; . . . ὑπὲρ ἐγώ . . . . 24 Ὑπὸ Ἰουδαίων πεντάκις τεσσεράκοντα παρὰ μίαν ἔλαβον, 25 τρὶς ἐρραβδίσθην, ἅπαξ ἐλιθάσθην, τρὶς ἐναυάγησα, νυχθήμεριον ἐν τῷ βυθῷ πεποίηκα ·23 Are they servants of Christ? . . . I am more. . . . 24 By the Jews I received the thirty-nine lashes five times, 25 three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I shipwrecked, I have spent a night and a day in the ocean depth.

Some grammarians (BDF, Wallace) consider this an "aoristic perfect" because of the aorists in the context. But I think these aorists are not narrative but constative, and this perfect is experiential. Constative aorists and experiential perfects have pretty much the same extensional meaning but their intensional meanings differ (Bache's category IV). My view is that the notion of what some linguists refer to "subjectification" may explain the nuance.

More difficult is the following:

2 Cor 2:13 wrote:12 Ἐλθὼν δὲ εἰς τὴν Τρῳάδα εἰς τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ θύρας μοι ἀνεῳγμένης ἐν κυρίῳ, 13 οὐκ ἔσχηκα ἄνεσιν τῷ πνεύματί μου τῷ μὴ εὑρεῖν με Τίτον τὸν ἀδελφόν μου, ἀλλὰ ἀποταξάμενος αὐτοῖς ἐξῆλθον εἰς Μακεδονίαν.12 Now after I came to Troas for the gospel of Christ, since a door had been opened for me in the Lord, 13 I had no rest in my spirit to not find Titus my brother, but I bid them farewell and I went out to Macedonia.

This really looks like a narrative context (cf. the aorist ἐξῆλθον), where the perfect is normally inappropriate so this is usually analyzed as an aoristic perfect. Yet maybe the perfect is experiential and Paul slid out of the narration to convey some strong emotion? The negative does not make things easier.

There are also some perfects with objects, which I tend to interpret as anterior (more likely current relevance instead of experiential due to information structure) because I'm skeptical about the perfect selecting the object instead of the subject. At any rate, they are pretty rare.

John 10:29 wrote:ὁ πατήρ μου ὃ δέδωκέν μοι πάντων μεῖζόν ἐστιν, καὶ οὐδεὶς δύναται ἀρπάζειν ἐκ τῆς χειρὸς τοῦ πατρός.“My father, what he has given me is greater than everything, and no one can snatch it from the father’s hand.”

We seem to have the same conception of the trajectory of the category at a high level, but I'm still not at all tracking with (among other things) your conception of the experiential perfect (most of them still look resultative to me). I think until we're able to see each others analyses and frameworks as holistic grammatical descriptions, we're not going to get any where here.

[Also, I'm moving this thread to the linguistic sub-forum] We left the LXX and Pseudepigrapha quite some time ago...]

Mike AubreyCanada Institute of Linguistics & Trinity Western University Graduate School